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Politicians’ Deleted Tweets Are No Longer Safe Thanks To Politwoops

The Internet was never a private place, particularly not for politicians – but now they can’t even delete their tweets. It’s kind of sad really and one could feel bad for them, if this whole thing didn’t promise to be entirely hilarious.

Sure, anyone can delete a tweet, it’s not like politicians’ delete key won’t work anymore. And yes, anyone who moves fast enough can grab a screenshot before they get the tweet deleted – that’s nothing new. But the folks at Sunlight Foundation just created a handy little script that grabs only those tweets that politicians delete – and posts them. Tee hee.

In a move that must have campaign managers on both sides of the aisle shaking in their shoes, Sunlight Foundation released this service, called Politwoop, today.

Sunlight Foundation’s mission is to make government transparent and responsible by “working to change the relationship between citizens and their government with Internet technology.” Well, Politwoop certainly does that! It brings transparency to a whole new level. And the website description is very clear – they will not be pulling punches:

Sure, we all tweet things we don’t mean to share, but now politicians have no way to hide them. Discover tweets that your politicians shared and then promptly deleted.

And it not only lists the deleted tweets, it tells you when the tweet was deleted and how long the tweet was up before it was deleted. Here are a few gems to pique your interest:

As you can see, some are weird, some are nonsensical and some leave you wondering what Chris Hass did as a child. Who is Chris Hass anyway?

Needless to say, some politicians aren’t liking this new service very much:

With one politico making his account private after this deleted tweet was shared online (click the image to see a larger shot):